Hi Rory
Thank you for the message.
Contrary to popular belief I am not a contentious bastard sowing chaos and discord.
I have also been online enough and part of a number of forums to understand what is acceptable and what is not.
In order to pay your message as much respect is possible, I will address each point seperately.
I honestly hope that you would consider my actions as constructive and not destructive and your feedback on my replies below would be appreciated.
MC Rory said:
Hi Jay
Our forum exists at the address
http://forum.dstv.com/ - the "dstv.com" bit in that site address indicates it's owned and operated by us.
I completely understand and accept it as per the Registration Procedure when I registered on the forum.
As a subscriber I have the right to use this forum to air my views/opinions whether they are positive or negative. The company that denies the value of criticism is on the road of folly.
I need to be honest here. The moderation of the DSTV forums have long been a subject of discussion by members, both DSTV and other forums.
It has come accross that some DSTV forumites, gwalker and clicker springs to mind, with their rather pro-mc posts seems to operate under different regulations as to the quality of the posts, but I will cover this later on.
Therefore, we have a responsibility to the users of the forum as to what type of information we put on our forum. (Remember that, in essence, the forum provides a publishing platform for users, that is hosted and facilitated by MultiChoice.)
This means that we reserve the right to determine what content is allowed to be displayed under our brand.
Agreed and I understand the concept of official statements and such.
In accordance with this, we do not want our forum linking to speculative and unconfirmed rumours, regarding DStv, at external sources.
This is where our opinions diverge.
Your perception of "ours" and "theirs" is skewed.
You are simply an administrator and moderator that is here to assist the "smooth running" of the forum for it's forumites. A Janitor for the lack of a better term.
For all intents and purposes, this forum is created for us, the subscribers.
Your opinion has as much value as mine does, whether they are in agreement or not.
The fact that you presume that the members of this forum are troglodytes without access to other sources of information is rather narrow-minded.
Simply denying the users/subscribers of this forum the access to alternative information on this forum is close to censorship.
Moderating said posts and threads will just lead to more speculation and all kind of misunderstandings and misconceptions.
When we have an official announcement regarding any aspect of DStV or MultiChoice, we'll post it on the forum. You'll notice MC Fathima and MC Marietjie do this from time to time.
We do not comment on speculation, therefore, we reserve the right to not allow links to speculative content either.
In this thread:
<http://forum.dstv.com/showthread.php?t=9344>
MC Marietjie very clearly indicated on 18 October at 10h21:
"As we always say on the Forum, when we are ready to make an announcement, we will do so. We generally don't comment on speculation."
I am sure that my opinion above covers this.
On the 20th October at 14h47 you, ironically, given the nature of the content of the post, attacked the opinion of another poster on the very subject at hand, threatened to report their post, and then asked if DStV had denied the rumour.
Could please assist me and point how his post was constructive and relevant to the posts that he quoted and the topic at hand?
I completely understand that regular forumites that are in constant agreement with the consensus tend to operate under different rules and regulations.
Your favouritism is rather obvious for all to see.
As to my questions whether DSTV has denied the rumour was rather on topic.
There has been no denial of any kind from DSTV. I wanted to ensure that I did not miss any information regarding the topic.
(While we don't require that you be an adult on our forums, we do insist that you behave like one.)
Cute. That witty sarcastic banter is at hand again.
Another forumite then pointed you at post #2, reminding you that DStV doesn't comment on speculation.
MC Fathima then helpfully posted:
"As previously advised when we are ready to make an announcement, we will certainly keep you informed."
Referring me to post #2 was irrelevant as I have actually read the thread throughout to ensure that my posts are relevant.
At this stage, not even MC representatives on the forum needed to point out what you were doing wrong. Other forum members had already taken you to task on it.
Wrong? By posting a simple question, threatening to report an off topic post and replying to sarcasm from an administrator is considered wrong?
You then attempted, at 16h14 and 16h15, to post links to content on TV with Thinus that is speculative and despite what he says, has not been officially confirmed or denied by MultiChoice.
The information was topical to the thread and as Thinus had insider information, it was relevant to the discussing.
My post stating: "DSTV seems to be only one not commenting on the matter." was rather glib but could hardly be construed as being disruptive.
You then submitted a flood of moderation-related posts, starting at 09h02, and continuing at 09h09, 09h28, 09h38, 09h52, 11h21, and 11h30, 11h55, 12h29, 12h38, the tone of which became increasingly hostile and antagonistic. We regard that as forum abuse, and placed you on auto-moderation when you began that journey, rather than going straight for a user-ban.
The first thread was required as to the moderation tactics used on this Forum was not conducive to any civil debate after a number of my private messages were ignored.
The flood as you dramatically put it could be considered nothing but reporting a number of system errors that a user was experiencing.
You are abusing the "spam filter" and utilising it to "moderate" what is posted by forumites/subscribers.
In China similar methods is considered censorship.
Our T&C very clearly state that you should email the webmaster if you are unhappy with being moderated, and that users should "never publicly argue with nor launch a public attack on the moderator that carried out the original moderation as their method of responding."
I have emailed the webmaster on numerous occasions regarding this matter.
No reply to date.
It could hardly be considered a public attack on a moderator (person) but rather an query on the moderation (methods) of the forum.
You have done both these things (on our forum, and MyBroadband), despite reading and agreeing to our T&C when you joined our forum. We have thousands of registered forum users, and only a handful have ever landed up on auto-moderation.
Are my posts on Mybroadband relevant to this discussion?
As far as I am aware that all my posts here and on MBB were relevant to the discussion and not destructive at all.
Not one of them has exhibited such anti-social behaviour as you have on our forum.
Anti-social by who’s standards?
The DSTV moderators and the administrator that consider the abuse of a "spam filter" to censor post and threads that they consider not to be conducive to the brand?
Your moderated posts will not be re-instated. You may continue to post, and all posts that adhere to the T&C and are constructive, will be approved.
All my posts and threads adhere to the T&C's of the DSTV forum.
Questioning the moderation (methods) of this forum should not be misconstrued as attacking a moderator or in this case, administrator, a person.
You have already verified through various means that I am not spamming the forum.
The auto-moderation through the abuse of the "spam filter" should cease
. Guess it's what Big Brother says, goes.
